


Upper Body Injury

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Hockey, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 02:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: "Careful," he says dryly. "Or I might think you're trying to flirt with me.""Oh, you'd know if I was trying to flirt with you.""Maybe," he concedes, flicking his hair back with a practiced nod of his head. "But would you?"





	Upper Body Injury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brightki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightki/gifts).



* * *

 

The guy sitting in the waiting room is tall and blond and angular and visibly, tangibly sulky.

He's also bleeding  _everywhere_.

Hermione really doesn't have time for this.

 

* * *

 

Living at home again after six and a half years of relatively unfettered independence is exactly as bad as Hermione initially expects it to be.

Her laundry is all mysteriously, magically done on a regular basis, which is nice, but there are also a lot of depressingly invasive questions about her love life—or lack thereof—that inspire acid-washed tingles of heartburn and pounding tension headaches and quite a bit more mental aggravation than she's prepared to deal with at this point in the academic year. She's writing a  _thesis_ , not putting the finishing touches on her  _Bachelorette_  application. There is no  _room_  in her  _schedule_  for a "relationship".

Hermione explains all of that—slowly, and with a frankly admirable amount of patience—to her mother, and then her father, and then three of the bored, empty-nesting neighbors who nosily power-walk around the cul-de-sac every morning. 

To no avail.

What's it to _her_ , though, if they want to waste valuable Wednesday night book club hours  _gossiping_  about Hermione's perpetual loneliness? She doesn't care. She's fine. She has Crookshanks, and exploratory data analysis, and an incredibly dependable vibrator with  _nine_ settings. She's going to be  _published_ , professionally, at the end of this six-month stint in upper middle class suburban purgatory, and all  _they're_  going to have is a pile of empty wine bottles to recycle.

She feels sorry for them, honestly.

She  _pities_  them.

Which is obviously why, when her dad tells her that their office is in desperate need of an emergency weekend receptionist, she only rolls her eyes  _a little_  before agreeing.

* * *

 

"Excuse me," Hermione says, probably not as politely as her parents would prefer, "do you need another...towel? Or maybe just a bowl?"

The blond guy who's been half-bent over in his seat for the past twenty minutes, holding a blood-soaked towel to his mouth and tapping his foot against the leg of his chair with no discernible rhythm, glances up at her with something very nearly approaching disdain.

"Excuse me?" he drawls.

And, god, he has an  _accent_. Blurry. Fuzzy. Almost a lisp. Whatever that ugly Canadian version of French is called. 

"Just, well." She pauses. Clears her throat. "You're bleeding. A lot."

He sneers, which is admittedly kind of impressive considering how swollen his face is. "Thanks, I had no idea."

"You had no idea that you're getting  _blood_  all over the floor?" 

"So?"

"What do you mean 'so'?"

He snorts, inadvertently spraying more blood across the industrial blue carpet, and then winces. She notices that the bridge of his nose is slightly crooked, like something's either been broken or dislocated, and wonders if he was in a fight.

"I mean... _so?_ "

Hermione crosses her ankles under her desk, a muscle twitching in her jaw. "What, you just—don't care? That you're a walking biohazard?"

He stares at her, disbelieving. "Are you fu—sorry, do you  _work_  here? Is it your  _job_  to hand out  _towels_ and  _interrogate_  patients _?_ "

She huffs, turning her attention back to the ominously blinking cursor on her spreadsheet. It's mocking her. From a distance. She  _really_  doesn't have time for this. "Did you have an appointment?"

"What?"

"Did you," she says, more coolly, "have an appointment?"

He smirks. "No."

"Then what are you even—"

"Do you not know who I am?" he asks, tone decidedly patronizing. 

She narrows her eyes. "In my experience, the only people who ever use that particular phrase are people that I would prefer  _literal_ _death_  to actually  _recognizing_ , so—"

The door next to Hermione's desk suddenly swings open, cutting her off.

"Hey, Draco, sorry for the wait, we're all ready for you," her dad says, poking his head out and jerking his thumb behind his shoulder. "Did you bring, ah, your trainer said you'd have the..."

The guy— _Draco,_ what kind of  _name_  is that—reaches into his sweatshirt pocket and pulls out a small Ziploc bag full of—

"Is that  _milk?_ " Hermione bleats.

Her dad chuckles. "There are teeth in there, too, sweetheart."

Draco snorts  _again_ and tosses the bag from one hand to another. "What was your name again?" he asks her, too smoothly, eyeing her with a bizarre blend of scorn and apathy and almost reluctant curiosity. "Didn't catch it."

"Didn't offer it."

" _Hermione_ ," her dad sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just—Draco, this is our daughter, Hermione. She's home for a few months while she finishes up her thesis."

"On what?" Draco asks, sounding unimpressed. "Nothing...interpersonal, I hope?"

Hermione flashes him a dangerously thin smile. "Psychology is a soft science."

His expression ripples with an incredulous kind of amusement. " _Criss_ _._ "

"What?" she snaps.

He leans forward,  _directly_ into her personal space, and lowers his voice so her dad can't possibly hear. "You need to learn how to relax, I think."

Hermione grits her teeth and looks accusingly at the single drop of bright red blood he'd just dripped onto the corner of her massive, color-coded desk calendar. "Weirdly, that's only the  _second_  worst bodily fluid you could've exposed me to."

Draco barks out a surprisingly sincere laugh at that before he straightens his shoulders, gives her a sarcastic two-finger salute, and saunters away, following her dad down the hall. 

It's confusing.

It's  _infuriating_.

She scowls.

 

* * *

 

Four days later, she has an ultra-purifying honey-avocado-oatmeal mask drying on her face and a steaming mug of ultra-calming jasmine green tea waiting for her on the coffee table.

Her thesis is nearly done.

She went to yoga that afternoon.

She ate a  _spinach salad_  for lunch.

She's fine. She's centered. She's  _perfectly capable_  of accomplishing things, and being nice to herself, and—relaxing. She's relaxed. She's going to unbury one of those Massage Envy gift certificates her advisers are always giving her for Christmas, and she's going to seriously consider using it. 

She takes a deep, oxygen-rich breath, and switches on the TV in the living room.

"—and Malfoy's got a bit of a reputation, you know," the announcer for a hockey game is saying. "Quite the instigator, isn't he, Barty?"

The camera is focused on two players in different colored jerseys who are tearing their gloves off and shouting at each other. And because Hermione is exceedingly, relentlessly unlucky, one of them is Draco, Draco  _Malfoy_ , apparently, and he's just as smug and pointy and inexplicably fascinating as he was in her parents' office. Draco shoves the other guy hard enough to knock his helmet off, and then jerks his chin up, demeanor visibly taunting.

It's horrifying.

She's horrified.

The second announcer hums. "Yeah, well—that's how they grow 'em in Montreal, eh, Ludo?"

"Mm."

"Yeah, and you know, it's just so—he's talented, isn't he, has an absolutely  _uncanny_  ability to see the ice, especially in, uh, in high-pressure situations, but, gosh, you know, the—the  _fighting_ —"

"He's just a pest, Barty, that's the, uh, that's the word around the league."

"Yeah. Yeah, absolutely."

"And—oh, there he goes, looks like he's landed a pretty good hit, and—you know, I've gotta say it, Barty, I've just—Finnegan, that's, uh, that's Seamus Finnegan, the Minnesota forward—he's really. Gosh. He's just gotta defend himself better, there. Malfoy's just. Just  _bullying_  him."

"Oh, yeah."

"And Malfoy's not that big, you know, doesn't have a huge size advantage, but he's just so..."

"Scrappy, yeah, just—just gets under your skin."

"A pest, yeah."

"A rash."

"Wicked wrister, though."

"Oh, definitely."

"Really smart—just—just a really  _clever_  player, too."

"Mm."

"Gotta think that reputation's well-deserved."

"Absolutely."

"Anyway, looks like a double minor for roughing, there, so we're gonna—"

Hermione blindly jams the power button on the remote and takes a much too large gulp of tea.

 

* * *

 

Four days after  _that_ , she's sitting cross-legged on an ugly, velvet-upholstered armchair in a quiet downtown coffee shop, glaring balefully at her laptop, when she hears that awful, smarmy, brain-meltingly distracting  _voice_.

"Is this relaxing for you?" Draco Malfoy asks her, sipping leisurely at a frozen blended mocha. There are chocolate sprinkles stuck in his straw. She can  _see_  them. "It doesn't look relaxing."

Hermione raises an eyebrow. "I don't know how to say this delicately, so I'm not going to bother."

"What?"

She smiles. "Fuck off."

"Careful," he says dryly. "Or I might think you're trying to flirt with me."

"Oh, you'd know if I was trying to flirt with you."

"Maybe," he concedes, flicking his hair back with a practiced nod of his head. "But would you?"

She frowns, firmly ignoring the heat she can feel creeping across her cheeks. "Wait, what?"

"Never mind," he says, flapping his hand and plopping down, uninvited, into the armchair adjacent to hers. 

"What are you doing?"

He peers innocently at her laptop. "Joining you, obviously."

"Why?"

"What's that?"

 _"Why_  are you  _joining me?_ " she demands.

"Because I'd like to enjoy my beverage in a comfortably  _relaxed_  position, Hermione, is that a problem?"

"Your  _proximity_  is a problem."

"Why?"

She blinks. "What?"

"Why do I bother you so much?" he asks, uncharacteristically crisp—because  _of course_  he can turn his accent on and off like it's a particularly annoying light switch.

"It isn't about  _you_ ," she replies, but the words don't taste quite right. "I'm just—busy. It isn't personal."

"Oh, so you're like this with everyone?"

Hermione's nostrils flare. "Yes."

He slurps at his drink, studying her. "Interesting."

"What is?"

"You lick your lips when you're lying."

She stares at him—at his eyes, glittering gray and blue and silver in the late afternoon sun, at his pale, winter-chapped skin and the golden-blond stubble skirting the knife-sharp line of his jaw, at the way he has an ankle so annoyingly,  _nonchalantly_  propped up against his knee—and she swallows, oddly flustered. 

"I don't have time for this," she says, slamming her laptop shut.

"For a conversation?"

"For  _you_."

Draco grins, unabashed. "So, it  _is_  personal."

Hermione stands up quickly, too quickly, and tugs at the sleeves of her sweater, hitching her bag higher up on her shoulder as she avoids his gaze. "I have to go," she announces. "It was...satisfactory. Seeing you. I guess."

His grin twitches wider, curves deeper, turning alarmingly contemplative around the edges, and then he throws a crumpled-up paper napkin at her, watches her fumble for it with an obnoxiously droll kind of expectation.

"I have better reflexes than you," he says.

"You're an  _athlete_ , it would be  _hugely_ embarrassing for you if you didn't."

He brightens. "You know who I am now."

She bristles and squeezes the napkin in her fist. "By  _accident_."

"Really? I Googled you," he admits.

" _What?_ "

"You have a very...detailed academic resume."

"I—well, thank you, I've worked  _incredibly_ hard to—"

"But using arbitrarily-reported consumer data for your machine learning algorithms..." Draco trails off, dismissive. "That's a systematic flaw."

Hermione gapes at him, nonplussed. Uncomprehending. "What do  _you_ know about it?"

"I'm a hockey player," he says, blankly, blandly, like that's a  _valid, self-explanatory response_. "I know quite a bit about statistical analysis and the hazards of incomplete data."

She stands there, stock-still, spine rigid, posture stiff—

And then she sits back down, draws her knees up to her chest, and fiddles restlessly with the cuffs of her jeans. 

"Go on," she says slowly.

 

* * *

 

 _Relax, j_ _ust do it,_ is scribbled on the napkin Draco had thrown at her, right above a phone number with an unfamiliar area code. Hermione inspects the mechanically tiny, shockingly neat handwriting for a full three minutes before reaching for her phone. 

Time is a social construct, anyway.

She can always make more of it.

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [come join me in hell](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com)


End file.
